Tiny polygon ridges on Mars

9:19 am

Tiny polygon ridges on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped and reduced slightly to post here, was taken on June 21, 2026 by the high resolution camera on the Mars rover Curiosity. It looks down to provide a close-up of the ground the rover is presently parked over, a surface covered with thousands of these tiny polygon ridges, all of which appear less than three inches across.

For a wider view and the overall context, see my post from June 24, 2026. While from a distance the ground at this point looked smoother than anything the rover has seen in more than five years since it entered the foothills of Mount Sharp, once it got close it discovered the ground was completely covered with these small polygons.

The picture to the right is part of a close-up mosaic of these polygons the science team is gathering using the high resolution camera.

The geology here is certainly puzzling. Polygon cracks are not unusual on both Earth and Mars, in places where the ground was once wet and then dried. In drying the material shrinks, producing polygon-configured cracks. On Earth those cracks often fill later with material that is more resistant, such as lava, which remains to form ridges when the surrounding dirt erodes away. Whether this was the process here on Mars however is not known. For one thing, why are these polygons so small? And why so uniform in size?

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SpaceX’s proposed cloud constellation of a million satellites named “Starmind”

8:54 am

Elon Musk has confirmed that SpaceX has named its proposed constellation of a million data computing satellites will be dubbed “Starmind”, following its pattern in recent years of naming every new project in a similar manner.

After Starship, Musk has named every project a variation thereof. We have had Starlink, Starshield, Starbase, Starfactory, Starfall, and now Starmind. It is also building natural gas pipeline to supply methane to Boca Chica that it has dubbed Starpipe.

The company hopes to launch the first Starmind satellites on Starship early in 2027.

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Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

Firefly buys the AI navigation technology used on its Blue Ghost lunar landing

8:45 am

Blue Ghost's shadow on the Moon, with the Earth in the background
Blue Ghost’s shadow on the Moon, with the Earth in the background,
after its 2025 touchdown.

Firefly has now acquired Space-ng, the company that makes the AI navigation technology and software that Firefly used on its successful Blue Ghost lunar landing in 2025.

Space-ng’s vision navigation software was utilized during Firefly’s historic Blue Ghost Mission 1 to determine position and attitude, detect hazardous lunar terrain, and autonomously redirect Blue Ghost in real-time, enabling a safe, precise touchdown within the Moon’s Mare Crisium.

…In addition to vision navigation software, Space-ng brings high-resolution spacecraft cameras and AI compute hardware to enable advanced space domain awareness, onboard optical navigation, rendezvous and proximity operations, and docking without requiring GPS or GNSS. Firefly plans to integrate Space-ng’s technologies across its fleet of lunar landers and orbital vehicles to support its growing mission manifest, including three additional lunar missions under NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, another lunar mission supporting NASA MoonFall, and a space domain awareness mission for the Defense Innovation Unit.

Of all the recent attempts by commercial companies to land on the Moon, Firefly is the only one to have a complete success. While Space-ng’s technology worked perfectly to guide Blue Ghost to a safe touch down, the guidance technology used by Intuitive Machines (twice), Ispace (twice), Beresheet, and the first Vikram lander for India all failed close to landing. No wonder Firefly decided to buy it.

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Musk’s employee stock options made them millions; Bezos’s employee options were worthless

8:31 am

According to a very intriguing article at Business Insider today, the stock options offered to employees at SpaceX and Blue Origin were starkly different, with SpaceX’s options making millions for its workers while Blue Origin’s were essentially worthless.

Three ex-employees of Jeff Bezos’ rocket maker Blue Origin told Business Insider that the company’s unusual approach to equity left them with stock options that are essentially worthless.

Meanwhile, they’ve watched SpaceX’s dizzying rise to a $2 trillion-plus valuation provide a massive windfall for early hires — from engineers to welders to cafeteria workers — who received stock options during their time at Elon Musk’s company.

Blue Origin’s options were written so that they only could be cashed in if the company went public within ten years. As Bezos has shown zero interest in going public — which would take away his full ownership and control of the company — those options have been steadily expiring as they reach their ten year due date.

At SpaceX however the employee stock options could always be cashed in, even before the company went public. Employees, both current and former, were allowed to sell their stock back to SpaceX or to its investors in private liquidity events that usually occurred twice each year. After the IPO they could now sell the stock on the open market, at the going rate.

The difference is possibly one additional reason the accomplishments of the two companies have been so starkly dissimilar/ SpaceX made sure its employees got a pay off for the long hours it demanded. Blue Origin did not.

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Conscious Choice cover

Now available in hardback and paperback as well as ebook!

From the press release: In this ground-breaking new history of early America, historian Robert Zimmerman not only exposes the lie behind The New York Times 1619 Project that falsely claims slavery is central to the history of the United States, he also provides profound lessons about the nature of human societies, lessons important for Americans today as well as for all future settlers on Mars and elsewhere in space.

 
Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space, is a riveting page-turning story that documents how slavery slowly became pervasive in the southern British colonies of North America, colonies founded by a people and culture that not only did not allow slavery but in every way were hostile to the practice.  
Conscious Choice does more however. In telling the tragic history of the Virginia colony and the rise of slavery there, Zimmerman lays out the proper path for creating healthy societies in places like the Moon and Mars.

 

“Zimmerman’s ground-breaking history provides every future generation the basic framework for establishing new societies on other worlds. We would be wise to heed what he says.” —Robert Zubrin, founder of the Mars Society.

 

All editions are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all book vendors, with the ebook priced at $5.99 before discount. All editions can also be purchased direct from the ebook publisher, ebookit, in which case you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Autographed printed copies are also available at discount directly from the author (hardback $29.95; paperback $14.95; Shipping cost for either: $6.00). Just send an email to zimmerman @ nasw dot org.

Leo Arnaud & John Williams – Bugler’s Dream/Olympic Fanfare

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The opening theme of this piece, by Leo Arnaud, was used by ABC for its Wild World of Sports and Olympic coverage in the ’60s and 70s. John Williams later wrote a version for use for NBC’s Olympic television broadcast, incorporating Arnard’s work at the beginning. This live 2009 performance is by the Bands of His Majesty’s Royal Marines in London.

Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.

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June 25, 2026 Quick space links

2:55 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Leaving Earth cover

Leaving Earth: Space Stations, Rival Superpowers, and the Quest for Interplanetary Travel, can be purchased as an ebook everywhere for only $3.99 (before discount) at amazon, Barnes & Noble, all ebook vendors, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.

If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big oppressive tech companies and I get a bigger cut much sooner.

 

Winner of the 2003 Eugene M. Emme Award of the American Astronautical Society.

 
"Leaving Earth is one of the best and certainly the most comprehensive summary of our drive into space that I have ever read. It will be invaluable to future scholars because it will tell them how the next chapter of human history opened." -- Arthur C. Clarke

Astronomers: We might be experiencing a shower of comets from the distant Oort cloud due to a close pass of another star 2.5 million years ago

1:18 pm

The uncertainty of science: Using computer models and the somewhat sparse data about the distant Oort cloud on the outer fringes of our solar system (from 2,000 to 200,000 astronomical units [au] away) and combining that with the data from the Gaia space telescope that mapped precisely the motions and distances of billions of Milky Way stars, astronomers now posit that the close pass of another star about 2.5 million years ago perturbed the Oort cloud and thus produced the shower of comets that humanity has been experiencing for the last few thousand years.

HD 7977 is a still nearby Sun-like star in the constellation Cassiopeia whose close passage was discovered by the Gaia mission. Approximately 2.5 million years ago, the orbits of the Sun and HD 7977 brought the two stars close together, but exactly how close is still an open question. Gaia data suggest they passed within 4000-25000 astronomical units of one another. Now, Kaib and Raymond have shown that the orbits of long-period comets suggest HD 7977 came within 6000-10000 AU of our Sun, setting off a major shower of new comets into the inner solar system.

You can read the preprint paper here [pdf].

These results are filled with many uncertainties of course. For one, the actual distance for HD 7977’s close pass is not well constrained. The margin of error is large, so that the star might have not done anything at all. Second, our map of the Oort cloud is very uncertain. In fact, it exists at this time only in theory, as it has never been directly observed. Astronomers hypothesize its existence based on the orbits of the long period comets that they have documented for the past few centuries, all coming from that distant region. So while it appears to exist, that existence remains unproven.

These uncertainties thus make the conclusions of this paper interesting but unconfirmed. Nonetheless, they are fascinating, because they are strongly suggestive, and hint at the impact of the galaxy and its stars on the evolution of our solar system itself. That impact is real, though tracing its history is difficult because of the vast time scales and distances. It appears the Gaia data and computers are giving us a first glimpse into that past history.

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South Korea’s space agency wants to accelerate its launch capabilities

10:53 am

The head of South Korea’s space agency KASA, Oh Tae-seok, yesterday outlined plans to to accelerate the launch cadence of its government-built Nuri rocket, while also beginning research into building a second spaceport along with a specific launchpad for private companies.

Oh Tae-seok, head of KASA, held a press briefing at the agency in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, on Thursday. “This week, the assembly of the first, second, and third stages of the fifth Nuri rocket will be completed,” he said. “From next week, we will begin full assembly of the entire rocket, and after the Launch Management Committee in early August, a September launch is expected.”

Oh also stressed the need to build a repeated launch system after the fifth launch to advance toward an era of “commercial launch services.” “To ensure the economic viability of Nuri, changes are needed in standardization and specification, as well as contracting methods and launch site operations, in addition to the advancement project,” he said. “We are preparing for four launches from 2029 to 2032.”

In addition, the agency plans to accelerate construction of the second spaceport. KASA began accepting candidate site applications for the second spaceport on the 22nd of this month. “We will select the final candidate site in October this year and aim to begin the project in 2028,” the agency said Thursday.

This second news report quoted Oh as also saying this:

“In the 2030s, rather than the current R&D approach, we should consider converting to a system where we commission launch services through purchasing, as NASA does.” This is a model similar to how NASA purchases launch services from private companies such as SpaceX.

In other words, even as he accelerates the use of Nuri, Oh wants to replace it with private rockets. Whether he can do both is questionable, because they act to cancel each other. A cheaper and viable government rocket will make it difficult for private startups to compete.

At the moment South Korea has one truly viable rocket startup, Innospace, which has one launch failure and hopes to try again before the end of the year. That it does not launch in South Korea but in Brazil suggests KASA has not been as cooperative with the commercial sector as Oh wants. His statements about building a launchpad for the private sector suggest he is aware of this.

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Astronomers discover two exoplanets as dense as cotton candy

9:40 am

The observed transits of TOI-791 c.
The observed transits of TOI-791 c by different telescopes
during its 232 day orbit. Figure 9 from the paper.

Using a combination of ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have now discovered two exoplanets in the same solar system that have a deas dense as cotton candy.

You can read their paper here. From the NASA press release:

Data from NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission has revealed two new “super-puff” planets, giant worlds so light that their density is comparable to cotton candy. Scientists calculate that these Jupiter-sized planets—named TOI-791 b and TOI-791 c—are the “puffiest” worlds ever found.

The planets orbit a Sun-like star named TOI-791 that is approximately 1,113 light years away from Earth. The TESS mission first detected the planets by watching for repeated dips in TOI-791’s brightness, a telltale sign that a planet is transiting, or passing in front of, a star. Further study revealed two large planets with unusual features.

TOI-791 b is nearly the same size as Jupiter but contains just 3.0 percent of Jupiter’s mass. TOI-791 c is even larger than Jupiter but contains just 5.9 percent of Jupiter’s mass.

The data for determining both planet’s density came from follow-up observations using a telescope based in Antarctica. Both planets have long orbits, 139 and 232 days respectively, so these observations took place over a period of eight years, in order to capture multiple orbital transits.

One interesting tidbit: Though the data suggests both planets are spherical, this is not confirmed with certainty. Overall, the nature of such puffy planets is not really understood at this time.

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ESA to expand its program designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry

9:10 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced it is expanding its “European Flight Ticket” program, designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry, by offering more rocket startups the opportunity to join.

The European Space Agency and the European Commission are inviting launch service providers across Europe to apply to join the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The objective of the Flight Ticket Initiative is to strengthen Europe’s access to space. European launch service providers compete to deliver missions for In-orbit Demonstration and Validation satellite (IOD/IOV) which test new space technologies in orbit. To support this, ESA launched a new two-part call for proposals.

To participate in the Flight Ticket Initiative, a launch service operator must first be awarded a framework contract. This allows them to compete for future missions under the Initiative. Avio, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg hold such contracts with ESA, following a first selection in 2024.

ESA and the European Commission are now expanding this pool by inviting additional European providers to apply. Companies that expect to be ready to launch before 2028 are encouraged to take part.

The program is also requesting bids for a new round of launch contracts. All bids are due by July 17, 2026.

The five European companies listed above are all either already operational (Avio), or hope to complete their first launch this year. There are several other European startups (Maiaspace, Latitude, HyImpulse) that are not far behind, and will likely bid.

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Four medical research organizations sign deals to do work on Vast’s space stations

8:59 am

Vast's Haven-1 and Haven-2 stations

Capitalism in space: The space station startup up Vast yesterday announced that three medical research companies and one university institute have signed preliminary agreements to continue and expand their ISS biological research on Vast’s Haven-1 and Haven-2 space stations.

Vast, the company building next-generation space stations and space infrastructure, announced today memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with UC San Diego’s Sanford Stem Cell Institute, Auxilium Biotechnologies, LambdaVision, and BioOrbit, advancing its network of microgravity research and manufacturing partners. Vast’s network brings together world-class universities, pioneering researchers, and cutting-edge technology providers to shape the future of microgravity research and manufacturing conducted in low-Earth orbit (LEO).

Though all four have done pure research on ISS, none have been permitted to produce products there for sale on Earth, due to NASA’s anti-commercial regulations. This will change on the new private stations. For example, LambdaVision has already signed an earlier agreement with the Starlab station to use it to manufacture its artificial retinas for sale. Auxilium meanwhile has already demonstrated on ISS the ability to create implantable medical devices using 3D printing. On Vast’s stations it will be able to expand this work by producing saleable products. BioOrbit in turn will use the Haven stations to begin manufacturing the zero gravity pharmaceuticals it has already tested on ISS.

Below is my updated ranking of the five American space stations presently under development:
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

8:28 am

SpaceX last night successfully placed another 24 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage (B1081) completed its 25th flight (50 days after its previous flight), landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2026 launch race:

76 SpaceX
41 China
9 Rocket Lab (plus two suborbital HASTE launches)
8 Russia

For the third straight year SpaceX leads the entire world combined in total launches, 76 to 70.

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NASA IG: Isaacman’s decision to cancel Gateway and SLS upgrades saved billions

8:01 am

Isaacman: Saving billions and actually getting more done

According to a report released yesterday [pdf] by NASA’s inspector general, the decision by NASA administrator Jared Isaacman to not only “pause” the Lunar Gateway station (killing its HALO module) but also cancel SLS’s upgraded upper stage (EUS), its related stage adaptor (USA), and the giant mobile launcher (ML-2) needed for that taller upper stage, saved the taxpayer billions in additional cost overruns, and has likely accelerated the Artemis program significantly.

NASA’s reformulation of the Artemis campaign to meet the President’s National Space Policy and increase its cadence of missions by standardizing the SLS heavy-lift rocket resulted in the termination or repurposing of several Artemis-related systems, including the EUS, USA, ML-2, and HALO.

Over the course of their life cycles, the combined contract values for these efforts ballooned from nearly $2.8 billion to $5.9 billion and NASA extended their contracted delivery dates by up to 7 years. However, our projections indicate that if NASA allowed work to continue to completion, the systems would have cost more and taken longer than what was on contract.

Specifically, the IG estimated that the overruns for the upper stage, the stage adaptor, and the mobile launcher would have ended up costing four to five times their original budgets. Gateway’s HALO module was less out of control, but it was still going to go more than 30% over budget. Overall, all four projects would have cost NASA almost $5 billion in additional expenses, with all four likely to also be considerably behind schedule. The upper stage and mobile launcher were certainly not going to be ready when needed.

The IG made no recommendations. It released this report to provide NASA, the White House, Congress, and the public the information so as to properly judge the agency’s actions, as well as provide guidance to the agency itself.

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June 24, 2026 Quick space links

2:58 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Smooth on Mars is apparently not so smooth

11:00 am

Panorama on June 17, 2026
Click for full resolution. For original images, go here and here.

Overview map
Click for interactive map.

Last week I noted how the terrain that stood ahead of Curiosity in its travels on Mount Sharp on Mars appeared to be the smoothest the rover had seen in years.

This week it turns out that upon closer inspection, smooth on Mars is not as smooth as it seems. The panorama above, created from two pictures taken by the rover’s left navigation camera on June 17, 2026 (here and here), provides a much closer view of that smooth ground, and revealed that it isn’t actually smooth at all, but covered with small polygons. The inset on the left shows the area in the white rectangle at full resolution, making the patterned nature of the ground very obvious. From today’s update by the science team:

From up close, the parking spot looks anything but smooth. … There are polygons, veins, lamination, and probably more, once we inspect the higher-resolution images taken today. “Higher-resolution” is the key for why we were in for such a surprise! The features are quite small, a few centimeters across, and therefore we could not see them in the orbital images or from a distance in our navigation and mast camera images. The camera resolution from a distance just isn’t enough to see them. But up close, the terrain revealed all its beauty!

The blue dot on the overview map to the right marks Curiosity’s present position, the white dotted line its actual travels, the red dotted line its planned route. The yellow lines indicate roughly the area covered by the panorama above. The rim of Gale Crater can dimly be seen through the dusty atmosphere 20 to 30 miles away.

Explaining the geological process that caused this patterned surface is beyond my pay grade. My first guess would be it is related to the past presence of water, in the form of liquid or ice, but no one should take that guess very seriously.

As I have said many times, Mars is strange, Mars is wonderful, but above all, Mars is alien.

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Boeing wins $2 billion satellite contract from Space Force

9:05 am

In what appears to be the first major space contract Boeing has won in awhile, the Space Force yesterday awarded it a $2 billion contract to build two new military communications satellites, part of the War Department’s MUOS constellation.

The Boeing Co., El Segundo, California, has been awarded a maximum $2,002,862,607 fixed-price-incentive-firm-target contract for the Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) service life extension Phase II effort. This contract provides for the design, development, build, launch support, and on-orbit test support of two MUOS satellites. Work will be performed in El Segundo, California, and is expected to be completed by Sept. 30, 2035. [emphasis mine]

Boeing won the contract competition over Lockheed Martin, which had built the previous MUOS satellites.

I highlight the fixed-price nature of the contract. Boeing’s space-related division in the past two decades has had trouble dealing with such contracts, its corporate culture having become spoiled with cost-plus contracts, which are essentially blank checks. Its fixed-price Starliner contract is the best example, but the company’s repeated inability to stay under budget or get things done got so bad that by 2020 NASA announced it would no longer entertain any contract bids from the company, a policy that it still follows.

For Boeing, making this fixed-price contract work is literally a make-or-break situation. It needs to beginning producing such contracts on-budget and on-time, or else it will die.

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Some details about SpaceX’s secretive Starfall demo mission

8:40 am

Artist's rendering of Starfall provided during today's live steam
Artist’s rendering of Starfall provided during the launch live steam

In reading every report in the past day about SpaceX’s Starfall demo mission, in which it tested a returnable capsule capable of doing manufacturing in space or point-to-point transportation of cargo, the only one that appeared to provide any details about the mission itself was this article at NASAspaceflight.com.

And even those details are unconfirmed and somewhat sparse:

The Starfall demonstration vehicle stayed attached to the Falcon 9 second stage in LEO [low Earth orbit] for around 1.5 orbits. The second stage then deorbited itself and the Starfall capsule, after which Starfall was jettisoned and prepared for reentry. SpaceX released limited information about the mission, and it is unknown whether the Starfall demonstration vehicle carried any payloads, though instrumentation was likely used to measure reentry forces.

Following reentry, Starfall separated its two halves, deployed its parachutes, and splashed down in the Pacific, approximately 1,300 km off the west coast of the United States.

That’s all we presently know. Based on SpaceX’s tight-lipped approach, this mission was probably paid for by the War Department. In 2021 the Air Force had issued the company a $47.9 million contract to test point-to-point cargo transport by rocket “anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity.” That cargo requirement suggested the rocket had to be Starship. It is very possible the contract was later amended to fit the 20 ton capability of Falcon 9, and this flight was the first demonstration of this cargo transport capability.

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